Through the Smokies in 4.5 days, a hiking primer, Part II

The next day we hiked out of camp at 9:30 a.m. and busted out big miles in the scorching heat. The dust from the dry leaves in the trail kept me thirsty. I think we both ended up drinking four liters of water that day. That's a dog days-of-summer level of water consumption.

[Early Bear and me, atop Rocky Top, Tennessee, elev. 5,440 ft., April 6.]

Lunch on top of Rocky Top was a highlight. I boiled up some coffee and packed a small stone from Rocky Top in my pack, just so I can get to Harper's Ferry with a rock from Rocky Top.

Rocky Top, despite being immortalized in the Osbourne Brothers' song, wasn't much to look at. It wasn't all that rocky and it was pretty small, no different than dozens of places I crossed in Maine.

We hiked 17.2 miles and bypassed three shelters to stay at Silers Bald Shelter. There we met an older lady named Cody and an older dude named Rawhide, as well as a quartet of spring break boys. We liked Rawhide. He never moved from his sleeping bag on the bottom level until he hiked out the next morning. Though he said he was trying to quit smoking, he didn't do much else, and he had a cig for breakfast and seemed to feel alright.

The next day took us to Clingman's Dome, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail. At 6,643 feet in elevation, it's a couple hundred feet higher than Mount Washington.

[The thing on top of Clingman's Dome was built in the 1960s.]

Between Clingman's and Newfound Gap we hiked on top of our fair share of packed snow. It was feet deep. Every now and then a foot would plunge through a spot weakened by the warm weather. Hiking it took extra energy.

At Newfound Gap the one highway crossing the Smokies heads into Gatlinburg. Almost every hiker we met in the Smokies had stayed or was planning to stay in that town. Not us.

Just ahead of the gap, I said that it would be great if there were trail magic. Early Bear said, "Don't count on it."

But a thru-hiker's mom was there visiting her son, Bandito, and his hiking partner and they gave us Cokes [the best thing for trail magic, if there's nothing else: A cold can of Coca-Cola. It's unexplainable, but that's how it is], oranges and plenty of Swiss rolls.

On the way up the hill we stopped and let pass a swarm of park rangers wheeling a woman down to the gap. They used a stretcher supported by a lone mountain bike tire. The rangers in front were grim, the woman in the stretcher had her eyes closed, but the rangers in the rear were jovial and told us it was a sprained ankle or a broken ankle, something, and disappeared down the trail. That's what the ambulance in the gap must have been for, I thought. We continued to see the bike tire track for miles.

The shelter at Icewater Spring Shelter was packed to the rafters. The bear cables sagged under the weight of the many food bags already, and the patches of flat land around the shelter were dotted with about ten tents. Early Bear and I had no choice but to set up in an area with a sign depicting a tent with a hashmark through it: No tenting.

We had a great noodles dinner past dark, with the lights of Pigeon Forge glittering in the valley floor below and west, visible through the black stalks of Fraser firs.

To be continued...